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in favour of Vizianagaram with the help of the French. Bobbili lay decimated. In the immediate aftermath of the event, the victorious Vizianagaram army celebrated in their camp but the elation was short-lived. In the dead of the night, Maharaja Vijayarama Gajapathi Raj I was assassinated in the camp by surreptitious enemy intruders. The successor, Ananda Gajapathi Raj II was suspicious. He believed that the French, especially De Bussy, had played a key role in the assassination and turned antagonistic toward them. He reached out to the British, in the person of Robert Clive, and signed a treaty to formalise it in 1758. The substance of treaty was that the British and the Pusapatis would become equal partners in ousting the French from the region. They achieved this rapidly through a series of successive battles in which the French were roundly defeated by the joint forces of Vizianagaram and the British. The work of Dupleix and De Bussy was undone and these defeats played a substantial role in the evaporation of the French dream of an Indian Empire. From Vizianagaram's point of view, these victories soon proved to be hollow as the British refused to honour the terms of their treaty using flimsy excuses. As expected, their relationship began to deteriorate, aided in no small part by the collusion between the Madras Presidency and the Dewan of Vizianagaram. The actions of the Madras Presidency drew the ire of the Court of Directors of the East India Company who th took strong exception. In their letter dated the 10 of January 1781 to the Madras Presidency, they said; %u201cOur surprise and concern were great on observing the very injurious treatment, which the ancient Raja of Vizianagaram received at the hands of the Presidency...%u201d Even their House of Commons was constrained to comment harshly in their resolution dated the 33